Helping Elsewhere – helping to educate

The girls at the Academy have some exciting news. We have recently become a sponsor of a very special charity called Helping Elsewhere. Based in India in the small hamlet of Mandrem, Goa is a small school. Two close friends of mine discovered Goa in October 2006 and after returning every 6 months decided they wanted to give something back to the community. So the ideas of ‘Helping Elsewhere’ was born.

Their plan before visiting was to raise money for Oxford Reading Tree Books which they were assured were used in the international schools in India. Literacy is the key thing for all the kids and their families as they see this as the main way of helping themselves and getting on in life. But after discussing their ideas with the headmistress, she was keener for their first donation to be a computer as it would start them on the first rung of the Government funding ladder. They decided there and then that the first £300 would be given whilst they were in Goa for the purchase of this computer and they handed over the donation to the parish Father a couple of days later so that it would be available at the start of the new academic year in June 2008.

After their November 08 trip, they had a great response to their blog posts and many supporters both old and new asking what their wish list was going to be going forward. Well, the target was as follows for 2009;-

The first thing was to fund the difference between working for just expenses (which is what many of the Mandrem teachers currently work for) and a professional wage. It means it will encourage good teachers to stay, which at the moment is a problem as they have to leave for adequately paid jobs as soon as they have gained some experience. It also means they can look to fund the teachers for older children to enable them to stay at the local school past 14 years. At the moment they would have to leave and not continue in education, or at least travel a good distance to other schools.

Needed: 3000 rps x 5 teachers per month (equals about £40 per teacher) – 180,000 rupees or approx £2400 for the year for all 5 teachers.

The second target to maintain the 20 children that were able to attend school in 2008 due to their funding.

Needed: £12.50 per year per child.

The third target is to fund a music teacher. The Goan government has given a grant, thanks to Father Dominic’s hard lobbying of the education department, for some musical instruments and money for a Western music teacher, but the children also wish to learn Indian music too, so they are hoping to provide suitable instruments and a teacher.

Needed 3,000 rupees per month (£40 per month or £480 per year) for the teacher and that is where we come in. The Academy will be funding the wages required for the music teacher. On top of this we will be donating $10 from every enrolment to Helping Elsewhere for them to use as necessary. They also need about £200 towards the instruments.

For more info on Helping Elsewhere or to find out more about how you might be able to help please click here…